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David Maraniss discusses his 2008 book Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World.
What is especially compelling about the 1960 Summer
Olympics?
What attracted me to Rome, what made it special in my mind, was the uncommon
combination of legendary athletes, the tension of the cold war, the beauty of
the setting, and the issues that arose during the 18 days of competition. With
the entire world on the same stage at the same time, I saw the opportunity to
weave the drama on the playing fields with the political and cultural issues
that were emerging then.
You say in the book that the 1960 Summer Olympics marked the passing of one
era and the dawning of another. What do you mean by that?
In so many ways, the 1960 Olympics marked a passing of one era and the birth
of another. Television, money and doping were bursting onto the scene, changing
everything they touched. Old-school notions of amateurism, created by and for
upper-class sportsmen, were being challenged as never before. New countries were
being born in Africa and Asia, blacks and women were pushing for equal rights.
For better and worse, one could see the modern world as we know it today coming
into view.
The Berlin, Munich or Mexico City Summer Olympics were arguably more
controversial or meaningful than Rome. Why should people care about Rome?
Berlin was the Nazi Olympics. Mexico City was the black power salute of
Tommie Smith and John Carlos. Munich was the terrorist tragedy of the slain
Israelis. All important events that transcended sports. But all defined by that
one event. What was so powerful about Rome was the totality of it. It was a
richer canvas, with more stories, more changes, more ways of looking at the
modern world, than any of those others. It had not only more issues, but more
compelling characters.
How did you get the idea to write this book?
The idea came to me as I was researching my last book, on the baseball
player Roberto Clemente. An important stretch in Clemente's career was the late
summer and early fall of 1960, when his Pittsburgh Pirates were on their way to
winning the National League pennant and the World Series. As I was scouring old
newspaper sports sections from that time, looking for stories on Clemente, I
kept seeing these amazing names – Cassius Clay, Wilma Rudolph, Rafer Johnson –
all athletes who were competing at the Rome Olympics. My first thought was that
I did not want to write another sports book, at least not then. But I could not
shake the magic of those names, and that forced me to take a closer look at the
Rome Olympics, and the more I looked, the more I realized that along with the
athletic drama there was a much deeper story there.
Do you need to be a big sports fan to enjoy this book?
As I'm finishing a manuscript, I make a point of giving it to a)
experts who can check facts and catch errors, b) sports fans who have a keen
interest in the subject, and c) someone who knows nothing about the subject and
has little or no interest in sports. If I have done my job right, the book can
appeal to all three. I want to write it so that people who love the sport think
I got it right, but also in a way that draws people to the characters and the
history.
The book focuses on some well-known athletes like Wilma Rudolph, Cassius
Clay and Rafer Johnson, but also on some lesser-known Olympians. Who are some of
your favorite characters in the book?
Along with the legendary figures who competed in Rome, the book teems
with other characters. One of my favorites is Ed Temple, who was the coach of
Wilma Rudolph and her Tigerbelles. Temple still lives in Nashville not far from
the campus, and is a great storyteller with a lively sense of humor, so his
memories of Rome help bring it alive. He worked without scholarships, without
his own office, and from the threadbare facilities at little Tennessee State
built a powerhouse women's track team that changed history. I also love the
story of Dave Sime, a medical student at Duke who lost a photo-finish in the
100-meter dash and had been recruited by the CIA to try to get a Soviet athlete
to defect in Rome. And then there is Joe Faust, who finished 16th in the high
jump, whom I used as a typical athlete – most don't come close to winning – but
an uncommon human being. When I tracked him down at his little adobe house on
the edge of L.A., he still had an old mattress in his backyard that was part of
his makeshift high-jump pit.
Of the major characters, who did you come to admire the most and why?
Hard to choose. I admired Wilma Rudolph for the courage she showed upon
returning from Rome and insisting that her hometown of Clarksville, Tennessee,
not hold a banquet for her unless it was integrated, the first of its kind in
that city. I admired Abebe Bikila for the sheer courage of running the marathon
through the streets of Rome barefooted, and for doing it in the capital city of
a country, Italy, that had invaded his Ethiopian homeland a few decades earlier.
I admired Rafer Johnson perhaps most of all, just for his integrity as a human
being. Cassius Clay was the same then, in 1960, at age 18, as he would later be
as the world-renowned Muhammad Ali, the same personality at least; his larger
meaning was not there yet.
Rafer Johnson is on the cover of the book and gets more attention in the
book than Cassius Clay. Do you think Johnson is underappreciated?
Rafer Johnson is one of the most underappreciated athletes in American
sports history. He was the best of his era, the most revered athlete in Rome,
and a human being of intelligence and integrity. I am delighted to have the
chance to try to give him his due.
As a writer, you're known more for your work in the political realm than
in sports. Why have you written books about Vince Lombardi, Roberto Clemente and
now the Olympics?
I love sports, just as I love politics; but I am no more interested in
writing a one-dimensional sports book than I am in writing a one-dimensional
book about a political campaign. In each of my three sports books, in different
ways, I saw a chance to write not just about sports, but about deeper subjects.
With Lombardi it was the mythology of success and the role of competition in
American life. With Clemente it was not just a dramatic story but a way to write
about the rise of Latinos and the roles of race and language in our culture. In
some sense, Rome 1960 represents the culmination of my work, combining all the
themes of sports, politics, culture and sociology that interest me. In this
book, too, there is a dramatic story on the playing fields, but so much more
surrounding the Games.
Tell us a little about how you went about researching this book. How
many people did you interview? How much travel was involved? Where did you find
the best material?
My first rule in writing books is: Go there. Wherever there is. This
meant going to Rome and revisiting the sites of the Games, including a memorable
day tracing the route of the marathon through the ancient streets of the Eternal
City. It was much easier to ask my wife to go to Rome than to persuade her to
move to Green Bay for the winter to start the research on the Lombardi book. My
second focus is on primary research – documents and interviews. My search for
primary documents took me not only to Rome, but also to the National Archives at
College Park, the IOC archive in Lausanne, Switzerland, the Avery Brundage
archive at the University of Illinois (Brundage was IOC president in 1960), and
the LA84 Foundation archive in Los Angeles, among others. I also interviewed
scores of athletes, journalists and others who were in Rome for the Olympics,
most from the U.S. but some from Italy, Germany and the USSR.
Do you have any writing superstitions? What's your daily routine like
when you're writing a book?
No superstitions. I'm lucky that I've never suffered from writer's
block. I tend to write in the morning, take a break to read, maybe exercise,
then write some more until lunch break. I don't have a daily goal, but a weekly
one. Some days I can write only a few paragraphs. One day and night I wrote the
entire ice bowl chapter for “When Pride Still Mattered.” I often stop in the
middle of a sentence or paragraph where I know exactly what comes next, so I
don't have to worry about where I will pick it up.
Have you always been interested in the Olympics? What are your first
memories of the Olympics?
I loved the Olympics as a kid, and it is fitting that my first memories
are of the 1960 Rome Games, since those were the first ones televised. I
remember the decathlon contest between Rafer Johnson and C.K. Yang, and I
remember the wonder of Wilma Rudolph; but my strongest memory, for some odd
reason – you can never fully explain what strikes your fancy as a kid – is of
the field hockey match between India and Pakistan. I was rooting for Pakistan,
why I cannot say, and when they won, 1-0, I remember dancing around my living
room shouting “Ya-hoo! Ya-hoo! Pak-i-stan! Pak-i-stan!” mimicking the
celebration I saw on TV.
Were you surprised that issues we think of as “modern”
(performance-enhancing drugs, television, celebrity, sponsorships, racial and
gender equality, etc.) were so central to the story of the 1960 Summer Olympics?
Yes, at first. But the more I looked, the more I saw how much of the
present you could trace back to those days in Rome. That connection is what
compelled me to do the book.
Your biographies inherently focus on one character. This book deals with
many characters. What challenges does that pose?
The comfort of writing a biography is that a life provides you with a
natural chronology, a skeleton around which the flesh of the book can form. This
story was more challenging in that sense. But I used the place, Rome, and the
time, 18 days, to give the story a chronological coherence. The challenge was to
bring so many characters onto the stage and not make it too much, too
complicated. But I look forward to challenges in writing my books, and I had
dealt with that same challenge once before in “They Marched Into Sunlight,” my
book on Vietnam and the ‘60s.
Do the Olympics actually represent any sort of ideal (then or now) for
mankind, or is it just another sporting event?
I'm of mixed minds about that question. Any event that brings the
entire world together in a peaceful way hints at the ideal of world peace and
cooperation. And in 1960 as today, athletes can build personal friendships from
sports competitions that transcend the tensions between the nations they
represent. But the notion that the Olympics is free from politics was untrue in
1960 and is equally unattainable today.
Is the city of Rome a central character in this book, or could this
story have taken place anywhere?
Rome adds a certain poignancy to the story, I think. The Olympic
organizers made good use of the ancient city – wrestling and gymnastics were
held outdoors amid the ruins; the marathon began at the Capitoline steps and
ended at the Arch of Constantine. But beyond that, the sensibility of the Rome
Games' representing a turning point in history was enhanced by the literal
golden glow of those days.
What's your favorite piece of trivia you picked up while researching
this book?
That the only athlete representing Surinam either overslept or was told
the wrong time and missed his only race, an 800-meter heat. Poor guy.
Both of your parents were writers and editors. What influence did they
have on your writing style?
My parents, Elliott and Mary Maraniss, were enormous influences in my
writing. Both were professionals, my father as a newspaperman, my mother as a
book editor. Though my mother was skilled in grammar, and was my best
copyeditor, both she and my father emphasized that the most important rule in
writing was to follow your ear. What sounded best was usually the right way to
go, even if that meant breaking some picky grammatical rules. My father had an
easy, natural style that was both intelligent and accessible.
You dedicated this book to your wife and mentioned that she travels with
you when you research your books. What's it like to have her by your side?
Linda is invaluable. She is my nose, since I lost most of my sense of
smell. She is my eyes, taking pictures and videos on all our trips. She helps
find documents and photocopies materials with me. Wherever we go on our research
trips, she makes more friends than I do and keeps up with people from around the
world that we've met. I couldn't do any of it without her. Writing books can be
a lonely process, but having her as a partner makes it much less so.
What do you enjoy most about the process of touring the country talking about
your book?
I consider it an honor to explain a book to which I've devoted so much
of my life. I love the stories I hear from people who have some personal
connection to the events of the book. I also enjoy getting the time to talk
about the book in depth.
Unless otherwise stated, this interview was conducted at the time the book was first published, and is reproduced with permission of the publisher. This interview may not be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the copyright holder.
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